February 17, 2005

Journalism and Academia: Why Do Legwork When You Can Climb a Ladder?

WHEATON COLLEGE ENGLISH PROFESSOR MICHAEL DROUT ASKS: "What do the the Wall Street Journal's snippy reaction to the Eason Jordan affair and the Journal's regular defense of CEO pay, the Ward Churchill affair and Churchill's defenders, and
some of the more common critiques of tenure, teaching and the humanities at universities
have in common with a a fairly lame Michael J. Fox movie from 1987?"

Quite a lot it seems. Among Drout's many salient observations in The Secret of Their Succe$s (an article well worth reading completely, is this spot-on observation concerning the upper reaches of the media:

The problem is, that at the highest levels of journalism, the journalists aren't actually journalists, they are opinion columnists, politicians, managers and pundits. To some degree they still have the source advantage--Dan Rather can get a phone call returned by Colin Powell; the Power Line guys can't--but most of their energy goes not into reporting, but into other endeavours. And at these endeavours they have no particular edge over bloggers. In fact, because bloggers can write as many words as they need for a story, writers like Wretchard at Belmont Club or the much-missed Stephen den Beste can write argument cum research cum speculation essays that are more interesting and challenging than a predictable column by Thomas Friedman or George Will or Charles Krauthammer (when columnists go out and use their access to sources and do actual reporting, it's a different story). In short, I think the metro beat writers at most papers are probably better journalists (both as reporters and writers) than most bloggers. But the famous journalists are, perhaps surprisingly, another story. When they demonstrate that they don't use good judgment, that they can't avoid blatant and stupid bias, and when they try to argue that they deserve special privileges that other citizens don't deserve, people start to think--rightfully--that they are better ladder-climbers than perch performers.
Drout then proceeds to run the Petrified Forests in our Groves of Academe through the same ruthless alembic. He blames it all on sleep-deprivation brought on by young children.

They should keep him up more often.

Posted by Vanderleun at February 17, 2005 12:10 AM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

And then there's preserving access. For me that was the real Eason Jordan scandal. When he revealed that CNN had undertaken an active policy of concealing the actual scope of Saddam's horrors in order to preserve access, it immediately called for the follow-up question: what else aren't the professional journalists telling us in order to preserve their access?

Posted by: Dave Schuler at February 17, 2005 6:41 AM